Blood Infernal

by James Rollins

  Xao bowed to his fellow monks, then to the Sanguinists.

  Christian stepped forward. “Let me go. Rhun must guard his pillar of this pyramid. But I can enter that pyramid and take those chains to Lucifer.”

  “But not alone,” Sophia said. “I will go with you.”

  From the strain in the shoulders of the two monks who carried the chest, it would take two Sanguinists to haul that load. Possibly three. But Elizabeth held her tongue. She would not go unless ordered, and perhaps not even then.

  Xao came forward and abased himself before Christian and Sophia, dropping to one knee to kiss both their hands. “Our blessings will go with you. The journey into the darkness within that pyramid of light is not an easy one.”

  Erin muttered to herself. “Hmm . . .”

  “What is it?” Jordan asked.

  The archaeologist turned her back on the monks and held a hand out to Jordan. “Let me see your green stone.”

  Jordan reached to his pocket and extracted the two halves and passed them to her. While the Sanguinists remained entranced by the chest and what it held, Elizabeth joined Erin. Erin fitted the two halves together and rotated the gem to expose the design imbedded in the stone. Only this time, she reversed the image, turning that chalice-shaped symbol upside down.

  “Could this symbol be some representation of that pyramid of light?” Erin asked.

  Erin swung around to Xao, plainly seeking confirmation. In her hands, the stone slipped askew, separating into the two halves.

  The monk stared down, and for the first time, he showed a strong reaction, his placid features wrenching into a look of horror and dismay. “No, it can’t be.” His face went hard with fury, stepping menacingly toward Erin. “What have you done?”

  Erin backed away as Rhun rushed to stand between the woman and the monk.

  “She didn’t do anything,” Rhun said, his tone full of warning.

  Xao shook his head. “The Garden Stone is shattered. In such a state, it cannot open the gate.” The monk gaped at them, his face lost. “With this key broken, there is no future. The world ends this day.”

  11:34 A.M.

  Erin stared down at the two halves of the gem in her palms, tamping down the despair rising inside her. Was their journey doomed from the start? She refused to accept that, not after all the blood and sacrifice needed to reach this valley.

  “There must be some way to fix it,” she said.

  Jordan took back the pieces. “And here I left my tube of superglue in my other pants.”

  “You do not understand,” Xao said. “The stone is not just broken, it is defiled. I can sense the shreds of darkness that still shadow its heart.”

  Erin pictured John Dee’s bell and the hundreds of strigoi burned to ash inside, all so their dark essences could be gathered inside the sacred gem.

  “Can it be purified?” Erin asked. “Baptized?”

  The holy rite of baptism could wash away original sin from a soul. Couldn’t the gem be equally cleansed?

  “Only good can vanquish evil,” Xao said. “Only light can rid the darkness. To purify such defilement, it would take the greatest good and the brightest light.”

  The monk turned to confer with his brothers. They whispered back and forth to each other in Sanskrit. Erin wished she could understand, but she sensed that the answer would not come from these three.

  I am the Woman of Learning.

  She stared at the emerald reflection off the pieces in Jordan’s hands—then back to the sand painting. She studied the three figures, each with a representation of Arbor, Aqua, and Sanguis before it, and recalled something Hugh had said.

  You must decipher the riddle so that you may retrieve the stone that belongs to you.

  She returned her attention to Jordan, noting how the light dappled his features. The motes of shimmering green appeared like tiny leaves shooting forth from his crimson lines. It was as if the stone was indeed a seed, one that had sprouted inside Jordan.

  She spoke aloud. “These stones . . . are they bonded to us individually?”

  Xao faced her. “So it is said in the proverbs of the Enlightened One. The Daughter of Eve will be bound to the red stone by her blood. The Son of Adam will be rooted to the green stone by his connection to the land. And the Immortal One will join with the blue stone because he has tamed his nature to walk under the blue sky.”

  Erin wished she had time to read all of these ancient proverbs herself, but instead, she focused on their current problem.

  “If the Son of Adam’s stone is broken, then maybe the Son of Adam can fix it,” she said. She stared between the snowy lion and Jordan, knowing the common bond the two shared. “Jordan’s blood holds the essences of angels, beings of light and righteousness. Maybe such purity can cleanse the darkness from the stone.”

  “And if that blood can heal Jordan,” Rhun added, “perhaps it also holds the power to heal the stone.”

  Jordan shrugged. “And if that all fails, I can always just hold those two halves together with my bare hands.”

  Erin could tell he was only half-joking. “What other choice do we have?” she asked.

  “She’s right,” Christian announced loudly, glancing toward the roof, likely sensing the sun. “Whatever we’re going to try, it’d better be soon.”

  “Then let’s see what my blood can do.” Jordan pulled a dagger from his boot. “It’s not like I can defile the stone any worse than it already is.”

  He lifted the blade to his wrist.

  “No, not here!” Xao exclaimed loudly. “It is forbidden to shed blood in our sacred temple.”

  “Where, then?” Jordan asked, pausing with the knifepoint on his skin.

  Erin knew they had no more time for second-guessing. She pointed to the sand painting. “We’ll have to attempt it once we’re in our proper positions.” She turned to Xao. “Where is the third stone? Your blue gem?”

  The one meant for Rhun.

  Xao nodded to one of his brothers, who returned to the belly of the Buddha and removed another box, also white, but painted with a sky full of fluffy clouds. It was easily held in the palms of the monk, who carried it to Rhun and offered it to him.

  Rhun began to open it, but Erin stopped him.

  “Don’t,” she warned, remembering the effect that the Sanguis stone had on Jordan back in Hugh’s church. She didn’t want this holy gem singing Jordan into a swoon like before.

  Instead, she pointed in the direction of the open gate.

  “Xao, take us where we must go.”

  March 20, 11:44 A.M. NPT

  Tsum Valley, Nepal

  Rhun hurried with the others out of temple and back through the stone village. His inner clock felt the approach of the noon hour, while the holiness in his blood responded to the moon’s passage across the sun. As darkness approached, his strength faded with each passing second, like sand sifting through the pinch of an hourglass.

  Ahead, beyond the open gate, the day’s brightness had dimmed to a dull twilight as the moon’s shadow swept over these mountains. The group rushed forward and bowed their way back into that wintry valley, the evil even more palpable now.

  As Rhun straightened, he looked to the sky, noting only a thin crescent of sun remained. The brilliance burned his eyes, searing him with certainty.

  We’re out of time.

  Under the bower of the two massive trees, the group quickly divided. One monk led each of the trio. Rhun split away with the tallest of the brothers, who hurried him at a fast clip along the base of the icy cliffs toward the western bank of that black lake. Xao took Erin by the hand, and another marched with Jordan. Both headed in the other direction, toward their respective positions on the eastern and southern shores.

  Between their parties, Sophia and Christian strained under the weight of the chest and its sacred silver chains and climbed straight down, staying in the shadow of the trees at the north end.

  The two remaining members of their party followed at Rhun’s
heels. One did not surprise him. The young lion padded through the snow behind him, growling softly, his head lowered from the evil wafting off the lake. Clearly this valley assaulted the cub’s senses as thoroughly as Rhun’s.

  His last companion surprised him. Elizabeth strode behind him, taking large steps, her back straight, her eyes on the lake. Unlike Rhun and the lion, he read a longing in her face, as if she wished to run to that lake and skate across its dark surface.

  Why does she seem so little bothered by the evil here?

  She noted his attention, reading the question on his face, but misinterpreting it. “I’m not about to let you do this without someone at your back. Especially with you missing an arm.”

  He offered her a grateful smile.

  She scowled at him. “Watch your step, Rhun, or you and that stone will go rolling away.”

  He turned around as the monk led them down a thin path to a tall marker that stuck upward from the shoreline. It was a plinth of gray granite, frosted with ice, rising as high as his chest.

  The monk brushed the snow off the pillar’s crown with reverent fingers, revealing the sculpture of a small cup, identical to the chalices depicted in the mosaic back in Venice. Like the structures in the Buddhist temple, the base of the stone chalice merged with the stone, making cup and pillar one piece.

  Rhun imagined if he cleared the snow from around the foot of plinth that it, too, would be a part of this mountain.

  The monk stepped to Rhun’s side, collected the box from his one hand, then turned it so the latch faced Rhun.

  “The Sky Stone is for you,” the monk intoned, bowing slightly. “You must place the sacred gem in its place. At the same time as the others.”

  The monk nodded toward the chalice.

  Rhun understood.

  I must set the Aqua stone into this receptacle.

  Rhun reached his hand to the box, undid the latch with his thumb, and tilted the lid open. For a breath, he expected to find nothing, some final act of betrayal by these monks. But instead, resting in a bed of silk, lay a perfect gem. It shone with the brilliance of a bright blue sky, as if the most perfect day had been captured in that stone, preserved for eternity.

  A small sigh of reverence slipped his lips.

  The lion stepped closer, placing his paw on Rhun’s knee to lift his nose higher so that he could peer at the stone. Elizabeth merely crossed her arms.

  Rhun pushed the lion off his leg and closed his fingers over the gem, feeling a sinking sense of unworthiness.

  How could such beauty be meant for me?

  Still, he knew his duty and took the stone in hand, feeling the holiness warm his fingers, his wrist, and up his arm. As it suffused his chest, he almost expected it to start his heart beating again. When it did not, he turned and faced the pillar and that carved chalice.

  Across the lake, he saw the others were already at their positions. Xao was bent near Erin’s ear, whispering, likely passing on the same instructions to her.

  Erin looked up toward him. Though she was fifty yards away, he could see the fear in her face. He knew the source of her anxiety and turned toward it now, too. The trio needed to act in unison, but there remained one final task.

  Rhun stared over at Jordan.

  Would the man’s blood purify and heal the broken gem?

  11:52 A.M.

  Jordan touched the cold point of the dagger against the skin of his wrist.

  This had better work.

  A glance up revealed what was left of the sun: a fiery crimson blaze shooting from the edge of the moon’s dark shadow. The brilliance stung his eyes, leaving his vision dazzled when he glanced back to the blade poised at his wrist. By now, the valley was smothered in the moon’s umbra, turning the snow a soft crimson and the ice of the lake an even darker shade of black, reminding him of those drops of Lucifer’s blood.

  The lake looks like a hole in this world.

  His blood ran cold at the sight of it, sensing its wrongness.

  Knowing what he must do, he pressed the point of the dagger into his flesh and drew its edge along his wrist. A thick line of blood welled up. He sheathed the knife and withdrew the pieces of the green stone, handing one to the monk at his side. Jordan took the remaining piece and held it under his wrist, catching the first falling drop into the gem’s hollow center.

  He steeled himself against some dramatic reaction, but when nothing happened, he continued filling that stone’s cavity. Once his blood was spilling over the gem’s lip, he exchanged that half for the still-empty one and repeated the same.

  Still, there was no blinding flash of light, no crescendo of song.

  Jordan looked at the monk for help, but the guy appeared equally lost—and scared.

  Only one thing left to do . . .

  Pushing aside his worries, Jordan took the two halves in hand. With his blood sloshing over the facets, he fitted the two pieces back together.

  C’mon . . .

  For a moment, there was no better outcome—then the stone began to warm between his palms, growing quickly hotter, not unlike the feverish heat when his body healed. Jordan prayed this was a good sign. Soon the inner fire grew to a burn, as if he had plucked a coal from a campfire. Still, he held tight, grimacing from the pain.

  He watched new crimson lines appear across the back of his hands, burning whorls across his skin, twining up his fingers. He almost expected his hands to fuse together over the stone, to become a husk for the burning seed he held.

  When he thought he could withstand that heat no longer, the fire subsided, replaced instead by a singing that passed through him, drawing him closer, rooting him in a new way to the gem in his hands. That faint echo he had heard from the stone before grew into a great chorus.

  It sang of warm summer days, the smell of hay in the barn, the sound of wind blowing through cornfields. It rang with the buzzing of bees on a late afternoon, the soft honking of geese migrating with the changing tide of seasons, the low bass notes of a whale seeking a mate.

  Jordan cocked his head, hearing a new song merge with the gem’s melody. A warm red ribbon of hope and life flowed and danced into his song, the new notes sounded of heartbeats and laughter and the soft whicker of a horse greeting a loved one.

  Then a third voice joined the chorus, as blue as the bright plumage of a jay in sunlight. This refrain ran deeper through the chorus: flowing with the thunder of falling water, the soft patter of rain on dry earth, and the sighing of a tide as it waxed and waned, a motion as eternal as the earth.

  The three songs wove together into a great canticle of life, one that revealed in each note and chorus the beauty and wonder of this world, of its endless harmony and variety, how each piece fit together into a whole

  Jordan felt himself a part of that song, yet still an observer.

  Then through that majesty, a command rang forth, reaching his ears.

  “Now,” Erin called. “On three.”

  Jordan tore his gaze away from the emerald depths of his stone to see Erin standing before her pillar, her arms upraised, bearing aloft a shining red gem that defied the darkness of the eclipse.

  Jordan’s heart ached at the sight of her, allowing the song to fade enough to listen and obey. She looked like some ancient tribal goddess, her figure lit by that crimson shine, turning her golden hair to fire.

  To the west, Rhun also held his stone aloft.

  “One.” Erin’s clear voice ran across the lake.

  “Two,” Rhun answered her, as if they had rehearsed it.

  Jordan added finality to this moment. “Three.”

  11:59 A.M.

  Erin lowered the Sanguis stone into the chalice before her.

  As soon as its facets touched the granite, the ruby gem burst forth with a blazing light, echoing the crimson fire of the eclipsing sun. Flames ignited from the gem’s surface and danced around the stone chalice. Heat and holiness washed across Erin’s face. She feared if she got too close it would burn her to ash.

&n
bsp; Xao showed no such worry. He stepped to her side and held his palms before those flames. As he basked his cold flesh in front of that warm fire, the monk chanted loudly in Sanskrit. She heard it echoed by his brothers.

  As the moon fully eclipsed the sun, sinking the valley into a shadowy twilight, the gem fought back against the darkness. The flames flared higher, wafting wildly, as if stoked by some great bellows into a fiery whirlwind. Erin wanted to run from that inferno, but she knew her place was here.

  Then, just as suddenly as they had appeared, the flames were sucked back into the stone, setting it to shining even brighter, as if a piece of the sun rested within that chalice. Then the fires ignited again—not along the gem’s facets this time, but all around her.

  Erin craned her neck, looking everywhere, realizing those flames defined a ruby bubble that surrounded her, its surface chased by crimson fire. It was as if the gem itself had suddenly expanded, swallowing her whole.

  And I am but a flaw in its heart.

  A glance across the lake’s dark surface revealed Rhun standing in a sphere running with blue fire—Jordan in a globe of emerald.

  She took a step toward them, but Xao was still next to her and placed a hand on her shoulder, holding her firmly. She stared at the liquid fire roiling over the sphere’s surface, remembering the monk’s warning about the danger of humans crossing these barriers of light, how they would be consumed by that fire.

  Or maybe Xao was cautioning her to watch what was still to come.

  The flames suddenly swirled and gathered near the top of her bubble—then shot skyward, angling out over the lake. Similar spears of fire—blazing azure and emerald—ignited from the other spheres, lancing upward to meet the ruby column.

  All three crashed together above the center of the lake, ringing out with a resounding note that staggered Erin, but Xao helped her hold her feet. She gaped at that giant pyramid of fire. At the top, those three infernos whipped into a great maelstrom, swirling their flames together, blending and merging their colors, revealing a slurry of every combination of light. Then that spinning grew even more intense, moving too quickly for the human eye to follow, until all colors became one, creating a pool of pure white fire.